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Post by COMpulse on Sept 18, 2019 16:11:30 GMT -5
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Post by jhornbr225 on Sept 18, 2019 18:42:31 GMT -5
How can that be true? Amazon has that same box for $650.
Must be a fake.
OK, tried to place an order, even though it seems weird that a clothing store has a NUC. They are saying with shipping it's $94, but for some reason I'm being charged $111. But the transaction failed. So I tried again, failed again. Tried again.
I now see that I have multiple pending orders, and multiple charges on my card. I emailed their customer service, and told them to cancel all the orders except for the first one.
This seems really sketchy.
Crap, even if it is real, and gets to me, the Amazon reviews are terrible.
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Post by COMpulse on Sept 18, 2019 21:23:16 GMT -5
I didn't say buy it. I just wanted to point out some cheap NUCs. That did seem way too good for the price. But if you receive 4 of them, I may be interested in one. 🙃
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Post by jhornbr225 on Sept 19, 2019 11:39:59 GMT -5
I know you didn't say to buy it. But if it's true, it could be great. As long as I get one of the working ones. Many of the Amazon reviews were negative, but there were some that were positive. But something that's $650 on Amazon for $90? I'm thinking it's not going to happen.
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Post by COMpulse on Sept 19, 2019 12:21:33 GMT -5
I'd heard about good deals on NUCs and that came up in a search. I7 for $90?! I was tempted to buy it.
My guess is that it's really a motherboard and case, and you need everything else separately. But the ad doesn't seem to indicate that. If you get one of these, and it is legit, you'll have gotten an amazing deal.
(For reference, the best deal I've ever gotten involved a coupon on a dealership website which did not indicate "Must be presented at time of service" which saved me over $1000 on transmission repair, and they immediately removed the coupon from their website afterward.)
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 5, 2019 21:14:13 GMT -5
Well, as COM suggested, I've been "riding the Panda" out in the garage lately.
I've been out there quite a bit over the last month. I finally decided to hang all the conduit I bought last year with the window AC unit, and run the wires so I can have outlets in my garage, other than the two outlets up by the front wall. Remember, this building is 32' x 64', so not having enough outlets is a serious bummer. I've got extension cords running all over the place. Most weekends I spend all day Saturday and Sunday out there. Last weekend, with the holiday, I spent Friday out there as well. I was out there Tuesday, and finally reached a point where all the wires are pulled through the conduit, and into the main box. I'm now going through and installing all the outlets and doing all the terminations. I'll terminate the main box last. Four new separate 230V circuits, four new GFI protected 115V circuits, 18 new 115V outlets, 280' of conduit (1/2", 3/4" and 1"), 23 new 4" boxes, and close to 1800' of 10AWG stranded wire.
As I was working Sunday, I noticed that I kept hearing the Windows sound that something had unplugged, and then plugged back in. I went over to check, and my screen was out. I moved the mouse, and I heard a noise like I had plugged the screen in, then I saw the display come back. Then it dropped out again. It never came back. I tried powering down the screenand turning it back on, but nothing. I finally just had to unplug the Panda, and fire up the WIN7 machine.
Tuesday I tried the Panda again, and it booted and I had a display. After several hours though, I started hearing the pluggy/unpluggy noises again. This time I was able to get over to it and do a proper shutdown while I still had a display.
So, either it's the Panda itself, the HDMI to DVI cable, or the DVI input on the monitor. The monitor works fine on the VGA coming from the WIN7 machine.
I suppose I'll have to do some process of elimination-ing. I can try the Pi again into the HDMI to DVI cable, or one the Atomic Pis. That will remove the Panda from the equation, but still leave the monitor and the cable. I don't think I have another HDMI to DVI cable around here to substitute though. I could go from the Panda to my Raspberry Pi Boombox screen with a straight HDMI cable, that would prove out the Panda itself. Or I do have another monitor out in the garage to try, same as the current monitor though, no HDMI input, just VGA and DVI. I ended up selling the Samsung Plasma I had out there that I had fixed last year. I could have gone HDMI straight to that.
The bad thing is that it's intermittent, with no currently noticeable rhyme or reason.
As long as I have my music in the garage while I'm working. Problem is I've been using Amazon Music. No commercials and no timeouts. Amazon Music is not supported on Chromium though, so any Linux machine will make me go back to regular Pandora, with ads and stopping every hour. I'm too cheap to pony up for Pandora Plus or Premium.
I could always plug in a little Bluetooth thing and stream Amazon Music from the Fire Tablet. I do use the computer though for my wiring/layout plan for the conduit/wiring.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 9, 2019 21:05:22 GMT -5
I'm trying to get away from the WIN7 PC, and with the LattePanda acting up, I plugged in the Raspberry Pi again.
I really like the Amazon Music service, I made a huge playlist, I hit shuffle. It plays for hours, no commercials, and no "Are you still listening?" music stopping.
Problem is, Amazon Music recommends Safari, Chrome, IE, Edge, Firefox, and Opera.
Safari, no way.
Chrome, No, not on the Pi. I've got Chromium, but it does not work.
IE and Edge, Microsoft products, nope.
Firefox? I installed it, but got Firefox-ESR, not supported, so I uninstalled it.
Opera? Not sure if it can run on the Pi. Looks like only X86 from my research.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 12, 2019 11:25:21 GMT -5
Well, I got the mail yesterday, and I noticed a black padded envelope with a very tiny Adafruit logo on on.
I didn't say anything and just laid it on the counter with the rest of the mail, which was enough to reasonably conceal it.
Later, the wife came up to my office, upset, but not with me, saying that she knew that she should have gotten the mail today. I claimed ignorance.
I know someone that's getting a little board with a 4 in the name for Christmas. But no case, fan or power supply...
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 14, 2019 21:29:46 GMT -5
Well, there was another option for the WIN7 PC in the garage.
Upgrade it to WIN10.
Although it's not the fastest PC, after support for WIN7 dies, on January 14th (I think), it's basically scrap. If I don't want to tie it to the internet for my garage music, it may as well not even be out there.
Well, since it has plenty of hard drive space, I figured I'd try the update to WIN10. I could always revert, I believe, if it does not work out.
So far not too bad. It's slow, but not to the point it's unusable. Amazon Music runs, as I'm back on the most up to date Chrome.
I did get a warning about drivers for the display adapter. I hit OK, and I think after the update it's using the basic Microsoft drivers, which still look OK. Wifi flaked out on me a few times, but now that I've re-wired the garage, I have a nice new outlet right next to the computer that the neutral runs right back to the main box. So I've brought my Power Line Ethernet adapter over to this side of the garage, put my router on top of the stand that I use for the stereo and the computer, and ran an Ethernet cable straight down to the PC. I did get one more undefined stop on Amazon Music after that. I might try the Edge browser, to see if it's any better.
I checked and it says WIN10 is activated. Sweet. Typing this post on it now.
I really wanted to like the Pi 3 out here, buts it's slower than this PC, no Amazon Music, and no GUI for many of the settings, as COM said. Last time I was out here and using it, I noticed the screen went out after 10 minutes or so. Screensaver I figured. I did some searching, and couldn't find it. Ends up I had to install something to show the screensaver settings, or modify some file in the terminal window. I'm sure if I used Linux all the time I'd get used to it. But in the garage, I just want my music, the ability to look at some .pdf files, and find some stuff on the internet. I don't want to have to go scour the internet for how to change some stupid setting.
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Post by tidder on Dec 27, 2019 9:33:13 GMT -5
Man, the Atomic Pi is $28 right now on Amazon. I think I'll pull the trigger, I need another tiny x86 to play with for a couple days and put on the shelf.
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Post by COMpulse on Dec 27, 2019 12:31:16 GMT -5
So far I recommend a mini-ITX build instead.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 27, 2019 22:25:24 GMT -5
Are you being serious about the Atomic Pi, Tidder? Or should I be sensing some sarcasm?
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Post by jhornbr225 on Dec 31, 2019 16:31:22 GMT -5
I did find a desktop app for Amazon music, but it really does not help much, as there is no option to install that on the Raspberry Pi. After some searching, I found that there was an app that somebody wrote that simulates the desktop app for linux. Cool, I thought, this might fix my problem. But alas, the default Raspbian image is 32 bit, so it wouldn't install. There is an experimental 64 bit Raspbian, I have not played with it yet.
I hooked up the new garage TV to the Lattepanda, and had it on for a little while on Sunday. The picture didn't flake out on me. But, I didn't have it on for long enough to call it good.
Out in the garage I have finished all my electrical work, and I installed the remaining 10 new light fixtures and installed LED tubes in all of them. The garage is now nice and bright, and not affected by cold. Now I just need to take down the scaffolding and put all the stuff back where it belongs so I can start parking cars in the garage again.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Feb 24, 2020 19:35:08 GMT -5
The saga with the garage PC continues.
I decided to move the CarPC that I built a few years back and never installed in a car out to the garage. It's an AMD e350, dual-core processor, 4GB RAM, new 240GB SSD. I wouldn't say that it's much better than the one I had out there, but I think it is rated slightly faster. One benefit is that the motherboard has native HDMI out, as well as DVI and VGA. It's got 6 USB ports, two of which are 3.0, and there are two headers inside for more. I have them hooked up to leads with USB ports on the ends, so I really have 10 USB ports. It's also got the 6 3.5mm headphone jacks for audio (Dolby 7.1 I believe), and a native Optical audio out.
So I can use my VGA monitor, and the TV on the wall at the same time, off the same PC. That was easy to get working. Although I have noticed the screen going to black a few times. That was the same HDMI cable I was using with the Panda, so I changed the cable. I'll keep an eye on it.
First problem was audio. I have it in one of those Mini-Box Black Box mobile PC cases. Although I can find it on their website, mine is slightly different, is has built in RCA jacks for audio. When I built it years ago, I don't remember ever testing the audio, since I never installed it in anything. Well, a few weeks ago I upgraded it to WIN10. I hooked it up in the garage, and plugged in my RCA cables running up to the garage Sony receiver, and...silence. No sounds. So I looked up the manual, and tried messing around in the software, but still no sound. So I removed if from the shelf that has the speakers, monitor, Sony receiver, etc, and took it to the workbench. I took it apart again, and checked the front audio header connections that had the cables going to the RCA jacks, and everything looked OK.
I went out again today, and looked at it again, and I noticed that I had the connections on the wrong pins. The header is a 10 pin, and there is a header for a coax SPDIF cable right behind it. I think I was mis-counting pins, because I unplugged those cables, and then plugged them back in, and now I have sound.
Network connection, now that's another problem. My powerline adapter in the garage is acting up again, so I connected to the house Wifi. I moved the powerline adapter over to the other side of the garage, now it appears to work, and I can get that Wifi on my phone. I took the Wifi adapter I have with the big antenna, that I was using previously with the other PC, and installed the drivers for it. I can get the house Wifi, but for some reason I can't connect to the garage Wifi. I see the network, I enter the password, but it won't connect. I tell you, I'm ready to pull the trigger on these point-to point Wifi things. I think I would do better even if I don't install them properly yet, just aim them at each other, while they are inside. One in my office, and one in the garage.
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